Grew from 16->28 active from 2022 to 2023, and expecting to peak 40 or so this year (rut roh).
For build-season logistics, the main thing that we work on balancing is (shocking no one) new student learning. This year we’ve built out some pretty extensive moduled pathways for CAD and programming students to follow, with lots of weekly assignments to keep up engagement. We’re also using our old CIMs and 775pros to build an offseason robot, and will use that as both CAD practice for our experienced students and as training for new mech students. While this is true with any sized team, one of the important things we’ve started doing is pushing our leadership to have a concrete plan for training at least 48hr in advance of each meeting (we don’t always hit this). We’ve run into “yeah no I didn’t really have a plan for today so I guess we’re gonna clean the shop” a few too many times.
For travel team eligibility, we require 75% meeting participation to go to comp, averaged across the season (though I will have a private conversation with the student if they’re on a boom/bust cycle with attendance). We track at the meeting level instead of the hour level. We meet 4x/wk in season, so just come to any 3 of those. I don’t care if it’s MWF (9hr total) vs WFS (12hr total). We have a lot of students who are averaging 3.5-4 meetings a week, and only had 2 students who were below (and they were at 73% or something). When we add extra shop days, those will count positively toward your count without affecting the total, so it’s an extra way to recoup time. If you’re over 75%, we cover all your comp fees (we work out of a Title I school, so we’re very focused on removing all economic barriers to participation. Hence, no team fees). If you’re under, on a per-case basis you’re allowed to cover your own fees and come to comp. This has happened once in the last 2 years. We’ve found that this structure has been a sufficient motivator so far. Last season we probably had 40 students in pre-pre-season (Aug-Oct), 35 in pre-season (Oct-Dec, when we stop accepting signups and “lock” our roster in mid-Oct), and 28 who stayed active from kickoff to our last regional. At the end of the day, FRC isn’t the best program fit for every student. I will bend over backwards to include students who want to be there (I drive a carpool to and from most meetings, open the shop at weird hours, and bend rules for students who have extenuating circumstances frequently), but I’ve found that stricter attendance requirements and setting a threshold (but not cap) on competition attendance has really helped students self-identify if they actually want to be there or not.
For competition logistics, the main advantage of more students is everyone gets a little more downtime. We run 2 full scouting shifts of 8 (3 robot scouts + 1 super scout per alliance), and rotate these shifts every 10 matches. Students not scouting will rotate into pit (mech/judging), impact, media, or break. While we do have a few students who opt to work extra scouting shifts, almost everyone had no trouble holding their attention for 10 matches. For lunch, we prep sandwiches in the hotel the night before. Mentors go out to by the standard fixings, and students will prep their own food. It’s really cost-effective and doesn’t scale super linearly with headcount, which is nice. We’re in this great part of the country where we don’t have a home regional (
), so we have to buy hotels each time. These also don’t scale linearly since we put 4 to a room, which helps squeeze in an extra student here or there. We’re very lucky that our school district allows us to take personal vehicles to events. We rent one 12~ seat van and then take 4 or so mentor vehicles, plus usually a pickup truck that’s towing the trailer and has a bunch of student baggage. Though I haven’t done it much yet (I probably should), I would recommend also making sure you have a pretty robust buddy system in place. It helps track headcount easier. I typically track by hotel room, because it’s harder to lose a group of 4 than a group of 2.
We couldn’t use all those students effectively, and we couldn’t provide them with effective mentorship in turn. Idle hands being the devil’s playthings and all, the result was a lot of distraction and disunity that had an impact on team morale.